Sudhu Tewari is an electro-acoustic composer, improvisor, and tinkerer in sound, kinetic and interactive art.

He has been called a professional bricoleur,junkyard maven and young audio-gadgeteer.

An early interest in disassembling alarm clocks and coffee makers gave rise to electro-acoustic instruments constructed with the remains of discarded stereo equipment, kinetic sculptures and sound installations. Sudhu builds audio electronics, acoustic instruments, kinetic sculptures, interactive installations, wearable sound art and recently began working with bicycles with wide variety of end results.

Highly educated at Mills College in electronic music, Tewari has been seen performing improvised music in various configurations with the likes of Fred Frith, Cenk Ergun, Mark Bartscher, Tadashi Usami, Gunda Gottschalk, Eric Glick-Rieman and Shelley Burgon.

In October 2006 Sudhu spent four months at the Artist in Residence program at the San Francisco Dump, crafting interactive installations, kinetic sculpture, lamps, and objects d’art from other people’s trash. The residency culminated in a gallery show in January 2008. Since then, Tewari's visual and interactive art has been exhibited at Swarm Gallery, 21Grand, ProArts and FLOAT Gallery in Oakland, California, Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California, at UC Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California and at PROGR in Bern, Switzerland.

In 2007, Tewari collaborated with percussionist Kelvin Underwood on a project that integrated Taiko drumming with electronics, noise and chaos and incorporated Capoeira and Maculele movements.

Sudhu has been seen performing as a modern dancer with GroupA , the brainchild of choreographer Alyssa Lee Wimot. Tewari also collaborates with Alyssa Lee to create light installations, costumes and wearable sound art devices for GroupA performances.

In 2008 Tewari joined forces with Nuria Bowart and Melissa Crago to form SuDoNu, a performance art company focusing on developing new forms of movement and interaction arising from improvised play and spontaneous ritual to create meaningful interactions with an audience.

Tewari spent the majority of 2008 in Switzerland, working as project manager for Radio Village Nomade an online sound project of Laboratoire Village Nomade culminating in a sound play aired on Bavarian National Radio. During his residency Sudhu also participated in several collaborative art residencies with artists from around the world.

In 2010 Sudhu collaborated with sculptor Bryan Tedrick to create an interactive light and sound installation to “breathe life” into Tedrick’s 50 foot tall climbable steel sculpture, Minaret. The Minaret was installed at Burning Man 2010 and well received. Tewari’s installation took input from climbers on (and inside) the Minaret via microphones, light sensors and motion detectors and used the movement and interactions of climbers to control the lighting on the exterior of the Minaret. Sound elements, pre-recorded sound/music and electro-acoustic instruments in the base of the Minaret, were also controlled by the actions of climbers.

Tewari is currently a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz in the Cultural Musicology PhD program and the Digital Art and New Media MFA program. Tewari has also been working as a project manager for UCSC’s OpenLab, a network for collaborative discourse fueled by academic communities, arts and science communities, and industry. Tewari also leads AUX, a collaborative research group focused on sound producing kinetic art and works with the Mechatronic project group in the DANM department.

Most recently Sudhu spent most of a week in a tree creating a site-specific interactive, kinetic sound installation at Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California and has been collaborating on a series of sculptures for an interactive sound garden with Liz Judkins, Daniel Yasmin and Chris Cravey.

Today's music from Princeton Composer Dan Trueman with the Yurodny Ensemble. Enjoy "Haivka."

About the composer:

Dan Trueman
is an American composer, fiddler, and electronic musician. He began
studying violin at the age of 4, and decades later, after a chance
encounter, fell in love with the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle, an
instrument and tradition that has deeply affected all of his work,
whether as a fiddler, a composer, or musical explorer. With the
Hardanger fiddle, and his new 5-string Hardanger-inspired "5x5 fiddle,"
Dan has performed his music with many groups and musicians, including
Trollstilt and QQQ, the American Composers Orchestra, So Percussion, the
Brentano and Daedelus string quartets, the Crash Ensemble, many
wonderful fiddlers, and others, and has performed across America,
Ireland, and Norway. But his explorations of musical instruments have
extended beyond the fiddle into new technologies; Dan is the co-founder
and Director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, the first ensemble of
its size and kind that has led to the formation of similarly inspired
ensembles across the world, from Oslo to Dublin, to Stanford and
Bangkok. Dan's compositional work reflects this complex and broad range
of activities, exploring rhythmic connections between traditional dance
music and machines, for instance, or engaging with the unusual phrasing,
tuning and ornamentation of the traditional Norwegian music while
trying to discover new music that is singularly inspired by, and only
possible with, new digital instruments that he designs and constructs.
Dan's work has been recognized by grants and fellowships from the
Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, among others, and he teaches at
Princeton University. His music is published by Good Child Music.

About the Ensemble:

Founded in 2007 by saxophonist and
composer Nick Roth, the Yurodny Ensemble perform contemporary
interpretations of traditional music from around the world alongside new
works by composers inspired by these traditions.

"Music sans frontières...exhilarating perfection."

(The Journal of Music)

"Evenset is surely one of the most significant records to come out of Ireland in decades."

(AllAboutJazz)

"One of the best and most adventurous world music discs I've heard in a long while."

(Downtown Music Gallery, NYC)

"The music emerged triumphant, vibrant and irresistable!"

(The Irish Times)

Yurodny have released two critically acclaimed albums on the Diatribe
label, and performed at numerous major international festivals and
venues across Europe. Their music was featured on the IASCA compilation
presented to cultural delegations from Barack Obama and HM The Queen and
has been played on most major European and North American radio
networks.

Recent projects include a world premiere of Japanese composer Mamoru
Fujieda's micro-opera 'Hi-Miwari' from his Patterns of Plants series;
'Sci-Lens' featuring world-leading computer music expert and hardinger
fiddle player Dan Trueman and a collaborative exchange project with the
award-winning Hezarfen Ensemble, featuring Irish and Turkish composers
Onur Turkmen, Ed Bennett, Adrian Hart and Kamran Ince, premiered at the
Akbank Jazz Festival, Istanbul. As part of the EU Presidency Award
Yurodny played a Scandinavian Tour and key performances in Switzerland
and at London's Kings Place as part of the Songlines Encounters Festival
in 2013.

Upcoming projects for 2014 include collaborations with Stian
Cartsenson in Norway, and a new album recording 'Haivka' with Ukranian
electroacoustic composer Alla Zagaykevych.

Do you enjoy your Americana music with some
jazz and light electronics? Then you will most likely enjoy "The B
Sides" as performed by Mason Bates and the DSO.

About the piece:

It was between Tchaikovsky and Brahms that Michael Tilson Thomas,
surprisingly mellow in his dressing room during one intermission,
broached the idea of a new work. Fresh off the podium after the
concerto, and apparently undistracted by the looming symphony in the
second half, he suggested a collection of five pieces focusing on
texture and sonority - perhaps like Schoenberg's Five Pieces for
Orchestra. Since my music had largely gone in the other direction -
large works that bathed the listener in immersive experiences Ñ the idea
intrigued me. I had often imagined a suite of concise, off-kilter
symphonic pieces that would incorporate the grooves and theatrics of
electronica in a highly focused manner. So, like the forgotten bands
from the flipside of an old piece of vinyl, The B-Sides offers brief
landings on a variety of peculiar planets, unified by a focus on
fluorescent orchestral sonorities and the morphing rhythms of
electronica.

The first stop is the dusky, circuit-board
landscape of "Broom of the System. To the ticking of a future clock, our
broom - brought to life by sandpaper blocks and, at one point, an
actual broom - quietly and anonymously keeps everything running, like a
chimney-sweep in a huge machine. The title is from a short-story
collection by David Foster Wallace, though one could place the
fairy-like broom in Borges' Anthology of Fantastic Zoology.

The ensuing "Aerosol Melody (Hanalei)" blooms on the Northshore of
Kauai, where a gentle, bending melody evaporates at cadence points.
Djembe and springy pizzicati populate the strange fauna of this purely
acoustic movement, inspired by several trips with the Fleishhacker
family. The lazy string glissandi ultimately put the movement,
beachside, to sleep.

"Gemini in the Solar Wind" is a
re-imagination of the first American spacewalk, using actual
communication samples from the 1965 Gemini IV voyage provided by NASA.
In this re-telling, clips of words, phrases, and static from the
original are rearranged to show Ed White, seduced by the vastness and
mystery of space, deliriously unhooking from the spacecraft to drift
away blissfully.

His final vision of the coast of Northern
California drops us down close to home. The initial grit of "Temescal
Noir," like the Oakland neighborhood of the title, eventually shows its
subtle charm in hazy, jazz-tinged hues. Unbothered by electronics, this
movement receives some industrious help in the rhythm department by a
typewriter and oil drum. At its end, the broom returns in a cameo, again
altering the tempo, and this propels us into "Warehouse Medicine." An
homage to technoÕs birthplace - the empty warehouses of Detroit - the
final stop on The B-Sides gives no quarter. Huge brass swells and
out-of-tune pizzicati emulate some of the visceral sonorities of techno,
and on this pounding note The B-Sides bows out.

The work is
dedicated to Michael, whose impromptu composition lessons informed the
work to an enormous degree, in addition to the countless concerts I have
experienced while living in the Bay Area. Many thanks, as well, to the
wonderful musicians who have brought this to life.

About the composer:

Mason W. Bates (born January 23, 1977) is an American composer of
symphonic music. Distinguished by his innovations in orchestration and
large-scale form, Bates is best known for his expansion of the orchestra
to include electronics. One of the most-performed composers of his
generation, he has worked closely with the San Francisco Symphony and
currently holds the position of composer-in-residence with the Chicago
Symphony.

Today's music comes from Kati Agócs, a composer on faculty at NEC. Here's "Supernatural Love" performed by Duo Concertante.

Here's some excerpts of reviews of this work:

"The music speaks of loss and redemption...The moods vary throughout
the movements. The first is spectral, wounded, desolate, and cold. The
second is open, warm, rhapsodic and elegant. The third is emancipated,
explosive, monolithic, nattering frantically like music from a charnel
ground. Vivid and strong work."-SHOWTIME.CA, Review of Duo Concertante,
Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, August 2008 (Stanley
Fefferman)

"Melting, ice-like, high-register piano notes open
Kati Agócs's Supernatural Love, followed by beams of sunlight in the
violin. A slowly evolving urgency characterizes the next movement. The
third movement begins with racing chords on the piano, echoed by
counterpoint in the violin. The duet takes on a masculine-feminine
argument, along with simultaneous pizzicato violin with percussive
single-note piano. The overall effect is serene and unworldly, exploring
space with sound in away that seems to evoke the time before the
universe hosted life." -FANFARE MAGAZINE, Review of CD 'Boston Diary' by Ibis Camerata, July/August 2010

"Supernatural Love began with silent, haunting keys accompanied by sad
strokes on the violin. The strokes of sorrow tied together as the piano
chimed. Nancy Dahn used her violin to amplify an inner, womanly call,
gradually slowing the music to a still point. Then, the composer created
a music of “empty sound.” It was an extraordinary moment, showing
emptiness, or loss, as a triumph over sorrow, clearing away an
obstruction to life. There lies the Supernatural Love.” -THE VERNON MORNING SUN, Review of Duo Concertante, North Okanagan Concert Association, Vernon, British Columbia, 20 April 2008

About the composer:

Performed by leading musicians and ensembles across the globe, the
music of Kati Agócs merges lapidary rigor with sensuous lyricism. The
New York Times has characterized her chamber music as "striking", her
orchestral music as "filled with attractive ideas", and her vocal music
as possessing "an almost 19th-century naturalness," while The Boston
Globe has described it as "music of fluidity and austere beauty."
Fanfare magazine hailed her violin-piano duet Supernatural Love as
"serene and unworldly, exploring space with sound in a way that seems to
evoke the time before the universe hosted life." A citation from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters praised the "melody, drama, and
clear design" of her music, citing its "soulful directness" and
"naturalness of dissonance." " Born in 1975 in Windsor, Canada, of
Hungarian and American background, Kati Agócs is a 2013 Composition
Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She been a
full-time member of the composition faculty of the New England
Conservatory in Boston since 2008.

Current commissions include
a work for the Boston Symphony Chamber Players for their Fiftieth
Anniversary; a large-scale work for Boston Modern Orchestra Project
commissioned by the Jebediah Foundation as the final work on a CD of her
orchestral works on the BMOP/Sound label; a work for two sopranos and
percussion, commissioned by the Canada Council for the Arts;
Crystallography, commissioned by Standing Wave Ensemble in Vancouver;
and Saint Elizabeth Bells, a cello-cimbalom duet commissioned by cellist
Andre Emelianoff. Her orchestral works have been programmed by many
orchestras across Canada and the U.S. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra
recently gave two performances of Shenanigan, commissioned in 2011 by
James Sommerville for the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra in Hamilton,
Ontario. The Toronto Star called Shenanigan "a whirl of symphonic
fun....a burst of party energy", while Musical Toronto called it "a fun,
accessible piece that shows off a symphony orchestra's full breadth,
and deserves to be heard again." Her Perpetual Summer in a new revised
version was a winner of the Minnesota Orchestra's 2012 Composer
Institute competition.

Recent orchestral commissions include
Vessel for Metropolis Ensemble, commissioned by Meet the Composer for
their 2011 Three-City Dash Festival at Symphony Space in New York;
Elysium for the National Arts Centre's Cultural Olympiad in Vancouver,
Perpetual Summer for the National Youth Orchestra of Canada's 50th
Anniversary, Requiem Fragments for the CBC Radio Orchestra; Pearls for
the American Composers Orchestra, and By the Streams of Babylon for the
Albany Symphony Orchestra. Recent chamber music commissions include I
and Thou for the Chamber Ensemble of the Orchestra of St. Luke's (New
York), Immutable Dreams for the Da Capo Chamber Players (New York),
Division of Heaven and Earth for pianist Fredrik Ullén (Stockholm,
Sweden), Supernatural Love for Duo Concertante (St. John's,
Newfoundand), and As Biddeth Thy Tongue for saxophonist Timothy
McAllister.

Kati Agócs was Composer-in Residence with the
National Youth Orchestra of Canada for their Fiftieth Anniversary Season
in 2010, and with the Spartanburg Philharmonic Orchestra, through the
'Music Alive: New Partnerships' program of Meet the Composer and the
League of American Orchestras. The Grammy-winning ensemble Eighth
Blackbird toured across the U.S. with her quintet Immutable Dreams. More
than eight different ensembles have performed the work since its 2007
premiere, including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New
York, Xanthos Ensemble in Boston, Lontano in London,U.K., and
Vancouver’s Standing Wave. Agócs was a Composer-in-Residence at the
Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in 2009, and performed as soprano
soloist in her own Awakening Galatea both there and on the New England
Conservatory's 'First Monday' series. She also sang in her own By the
Streams of Babylon, together with soprano Lisa Bielawa and the Boston
Modern Orchestra Project with Gil Rose conducting. Time Out New York
featured the premiere recording of Every Lover is a Warrior, on harpist
Bridget Kibbey's debut CD, Love is Come Again, as one of its top ten
recordings of 2007, describing the work as "a powerful, ruminative
suite" and Agócs as an "innovative" and "promising" composer.

Awards include the 2013 Composition Fellowship from the John Simon
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, an inaugural 2009 Brother Thomas
Fellowship from the Boston Foundation, a 2008 Charles Ives Fellowship
from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the ASCAP Leonard
Bernstein Fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2007, multiple
commissioning grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, a Fulbright
Fellowship to the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, Jacob K. Javits
Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education, a New York Foundation
for the Arts Composition fellowship, a Jerome Foundation commission,
Presser Foundation Award, and honors from ASCAP in their Morton Gould
Young Composer Awards. Perpetual Summer was the runner-up for ASCAP's
Rudolph Nissim Prize for 2011, one of only two works selected by a jury
of conductors out of over 260 anonymously-submitted new orchestral
scores. (The work has since been revised, with the revised version yet
to be premiered). Fellowships and residencies include the Norfolk
Chamber Music Festival (Yale Summer School of Music), The Aspen Music
Festival, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Dartington International Music
Festival (U.K.), and the Virginia Arts Festival. She has written on
recent American music for Tempo, and wrote a candid inside glimpse into
the new-music scene in Hungary for The Musical Times in 2005. She had
previously spearheaded an exchange program between Juilliard and the
Liszt Academy in Budapest. As a result of these activities, the
progressive Vienna-based Hungarian publication Bécsi Napló credited her
with raising the visibility of Hungarian composers abroad.

Kati
Agócs earned the Doctor of Musical Arts and Masters degrees in
Composition from The Juilliard School, where her principal teacher was
Milton Babbitt. She is also an alumna of the Aspen Music School,
Tanglewood Music Festival, Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific (one
of the United World Colleges, where she represented the province of
Ontario), and Sarah Lawrence College, all of which she attended on full
scholarship. From 2006 through 2008 she taught at the School of Music,
Memorial University of Newfoundland. She maintains a work studio in the
village of Flatrock, near St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.

Today's piece comes from New York composer Kenji Bunch. Here is "String Circle" as performed by the youth group, FACE THE MUSIC.

About the piece:

For whatever reason, entertainment has become something of a
dirty word among the classical crowd. Even so, I have a great deal of
respect for it as a goal, and I would be honored to know I entertained a
listener with my music. I think it’s a generous act to strive for. -
Kenji Bunch

It is also a goal that Kenji Bunch has achieved brilliantly with a
rapidly growing catalog of works that is performed and recorded with
increasing frequency in this country and abroad. Bunch, an active
violist and a former member of the Flux String Quartet, also plays
fiddle in the group Citigrass. The
New York-based artist composed the present work as a viola quintet for
himself and the Harrington String Quartet, with whom he gave the first
performance in Amarillo, Texas, in 2005.

In String Circle, Bunch adds some strong vernacular accents
to a venerable classical genre. The
five movements integrate jazz, rock and bluegrass influences in a way
that “entertains” in the sense of keeping you on the edge of your seat
wondering what combination of sounds the composer is going to come up
with next, and how he will make familiar melodic and rhythmic elements
appear as though you’ve never heard them before. The slow
third movement is modelled on a traditional ballad, while the
fourth-movement scherzo contains an accompaniment figure for the second
viola marked “quasi ukulele.” The last movement is a study in
mesmerizing ostinatos that culminate in a rhythmic explosion at the end
of the piece.

About the composer:

Kenji Bunch has emerged as one of the most
engaging, influential, and prolific American composers of his
generation. Hailed by the New York Times as “A Composer To Watch” and
cited by Alex Ross in his seminal book “The Rest Is Noise,” Mr. Bunch’s
unique blend of wit, exuberance, lyricism, unpredictable stylistic
infusions, and exquisite craftsmanship has brought acclaim from
audiences, performers, and critics alike.

Mr. Bunch's symphonic
music has been performed by over forty orchestras, and his genre-defying
chamber works have been performed in premiere venues on six
continents. His music is regularly broadcast on national radio,
including NPR, BBC, and NHK, and has been recorded on labels including
Sony/BMG, EMI Classics, Delos, Koch, Kleos Classics, RCA, Naxos, NPM,
Pony Canyon, BCMF Records, GENUIN, Capstone, MSR Classics, AMR, Innova,
ARS, Crystal, Presentation Partners, and Bulging Disc Records.

As a composer, his residencies include Mobile Symphony (Meet The
Composer Music Alive), Spoleto USA, Bravo! Vail, Sound Encounters, the Chintimini Chamber Music Festival, and the Craftsbury Chamber Players. He also served for two years as the composer in residence for Young Concert Artists, Inc.
His collaborations with renowned choreographers David Parsons, Nai-Ni
Chen, Kate Skarpetowska, and Darrell Grand Moultrie have received great
acclaim.

Concerts devoted to his chamber music have been given
at the Stamford Music Festival in England, and at the Perpignan
Conservatory in the south of France, and are scheduled for this summer
at the Landgoedconcerten Oranjewoud Festival in The Netherlands. Recent
projects include the world premiere of his Piano Concerto in May 2011
with pianist Monica Ohuchi
and the Colorado Symphony. In October, 2011, he appeared as the
soloist with the American Composers Orchestra in the world premiere of
his viola concerto "The Devil's Box" in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall.
The Spring of 2013 will see the world premiere of a new work for
electric violinist Tracy Silverman and orchestra, commissioned by Paul
Gambill and The Orchestra Engagement Laboratory.

Mr. Bunch
maintains an active career as a violist, and is widely recognized for
performing his own groundbreaking works for viola. A founding member of
the Flux Quartet (1996-2002) and Ne(x)tworks
(2003-2011), Mr. Bunch is a veteran of the New York new music world.
With a deep interest in vernacular American music and improvisation, he
also plays bluegrass fiddle and sings with the band Citigrass,
and is a frequent guest performer, recording artist, and arranger with
many prominent rock, jazz, folk, and alternative/ experimental artists.
In the spring of 2011, he released a recording of his complete works
for solo viola on Bulging Disc Records.

A native of Portland,
Oregon, Mr. Bunch studied at the Juilliard School, receiving his
Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in viola with Toby Appel, and in
composition with Robert Beaser. Other composing mentors include Eric
Ewazen and Stanley Wolfe. Now a dedicated teacher himself, Mr. Bunch
has developed and conducted residencies, workshops, and master classes
across the country in composition, viola performance, improvisation,
music appreciation, and arts education to students ranging in age from
kindergarten to adult professionals. He teaches at the Juilliard
Pre-College, and lives in Brooklyn with his wife Monica, daughter
Emmaline, and rescued pit bull Coffee.

As
someone who listens to a lot of experimental music, I have to admit, I
have never really heard anything quite like this. Today's music is from
Víctor Adán writing for Dot Matrix Printer. If you have a second and you
haven't heard this before, you should check this out.

I was born and raised in the "navel of the moon". I have been interested
in music, visual arts, and computer programming since childhood. My
first musical experiments took place during the late 1980s, when my
parents acquired two surprising machines for our home: an upright piano
and a personal computer. Both machines fascinated me, and I spent many
hours pressing the keys of these two wondrous devices. Each taught me a
different language, the one music notation, the other BASIC. Both
machines served me well as musical instruments. The one gave me sound by
pressing its keys, the other by typing lines of code with the BEEP and
PLAY commands.

Then I went to music school, where I was quickly taught what music
really was, and where I soon forgot all about my silly experiments.
After a few disappointing first years in college, I discovered the
uncompromising music of composer Julio Estrada and, in 1997, I joined
his deschooling Music Creation Lab at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Upon completing my undergraduate studies, I shifted focus to the
quantitative side of my musical interests. In 2005 I earned an MS in
media technology and digital communications from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and in 2010 a DMA from Columbia University.

I currently live in New York and typically spend my days
composing, writing software and, in my spare time, teaching robots how
to draw.

Here's a little piece from composer/improvisor Douglas Ewart to start
your day off right. Enjoy "Red Hills" as performed by N.S.A Ensemble.

About the composer:

Perhaps
best known as a composer, improviser, sculptor and maker of masks and
instruments, Douglas R. Ewart is also an educator, lecturer, arts
organization consultant and all around visionary. In projects done in
diverse media throughout an award-winning and widely-acclaimed 40-year
career, Mr. Ewart has woven his remarkably broad gifts into a single
sensibility that encourages and celebrates--as an antidote to the
divisions and compartmentalization afflicting modern life-the wholeness
of individuals in culturally active communities.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1946, Douglas R. Ewart immigrated to
Chicago, Illinois in the United States in 1963. His travels throughout
the world and interactions with diverse people since then has, again and
again confirmed his view that the world is an interdependent entity. An
example of his efforts both to study and to contribute to this
interdependence is his use of his prestigious 1987 U.S.-Japan Creative
Arts Fellowship to study both modern Japanese culture and the
traditional Buddhist shakuhachi flute, and also to give public
performances while in Japan.

In America, his determination to spread his perspective is part of the
inspiration behind his often multi-disciplinary works and their
encouragement of artist-audience interactions. It is also the basis of
the teaching philosophy with which he guides his classes at the School
of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he has taught since 1990, and the
basis of the perspective he has brought to his service on advisory
boards for institutions such as The National Endowment for the Arts,
Meet the Composer (New York City) and Arts Midwest. Mr. Ewart uses his
past experience as chairman of the internationally renowned Association
for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) to celebrate and build
upon the history and achievements of the organization, and is from this
perspective a natural extension of the activities he has been engaged in
for the past four decades.

His administrative, teaching and other duties have not prevented Ewart
from maintaining several musical ensembles, the Nyahbingi Drum Choir.
the Clarinet Choir, Douglas R. Ewart & Inventions, Douglas R. Ewart
& Quasar and Douglas R. Ewart & Stringnets. Nor has it prevented
him from releasing some of the resulting music on his own record label,
Aarawak Records (founded in 1983), which has released his Red Hills and
Bamboo Forest, Bamboo Meditations at Banff, Angles of Entrance, New
Beings, and Velvet Fire.
Always seeking new ways to be an agent of transformation, and convinced
that compositions should change, just as their performers do, Ewart has
created new or revised musical forms, such has his suite “Music from the
Bamboo Forest,” which is in a state of constant evolution (its score
currently comprises six movements employing a cornucopia of flutes,
reeds, percussion instruments--many of them handmade -- and significant
audience participation). Each performance or production by Ewart
reflects time-tested structures, but each also incorporates his most
immediate experiences of America and the world, and taps his many
creative engagements with collaborators such the master musicians as
Muhal Richard Abrams, Amina Myers, Beah Richards, the Art Ensemble of
Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Alvin Curran, Anthony Davis, Von Freeman, Fred
Anderson, Joseph Jarman, Yusef Lateef, Roscoe Mitchell, Ajule Sonny
Rutlin, Rita Warford, Dee Alexander, Robert Dick, George E. Lewis, James
Newton, Cecil Taylor, Richard Teitelbaum and Henry Threadgill.

Beyond sound itself, Ewart’s music finds natural extensions (in every
sense of the word) in the instruments he makes, which run the gamut from
unique wind instruments to percussion instruments. Beyond these are
sculptures, sound sculptures, and individually handcrafted masks that
have been exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Institute
of Chicago, among others. All these elements of his art are on display
every year in Chicago and in other cities in stagings of “Crepuscule,”
which in Ewart’s own opinion best represents his celebratory spontaneity
and commitment to organic inclusivity. A massive collective
composition, “Crepuscule” is a celebration of sunset that brings
together diverse musical groups, dancers, artists and activist for a
musical and visual event that has become one of the signature programs
of the Jazz Institute of Chicago, being held annually at the city's
Washington Park. Ewart improvises with the scores of other performers
who come together for “Crepuscule” by using not only well-known wind
instruments but also his own wondrously inventive percussion instruments
(crutches, oars and skis transformed by cymbals and bells). In addition
to having been adopted as an annual ritual in Chicago, “Crepuscule” has
been performed in Philadelphia, PA and Minneapolis, MN, and employed by
the Banlieues Bleues Festival in Paris, France to unite the diverse
artistic and ethnic cultures of Paris’ inner city communities.

Ewart is the winner of the Bush Artists Fellowship (1997), Minnesota Composers
Forum/McKnight Foundation fellowships, Jerome Foundation grants, Mayor
Harold Washington's Outstanding Artist Award and a Naropa Institute
residency among many other honors. He has performed at the Moers
International Festival (Germany), at the University of Puerto Rico San
Juan, throughout Brazil, in Tokyo, Perth, Havana, Paris, Stockholm,
London, Düsseldorf and Berlin; in the U.S. he has performed at Mobius
(Boston), The Contemporary Art Center (New Orleans), the Walker Art
Center (Minneapolis), the Science Museum (St. Paul), 1750 Arch Street
(Berkeley), Painted Bride (Philadelphia), Creative Arts Collective
(Detroit), Lincoln Park Zoo and the Field Museum of Natural History
(Chicago), Merkin Hall, the Public Theater, The Kitchen and Carnegie
Hall (New York). He has led workshops and lectured at Louisiana Nature
Center (New Orleans), University of Illinois Unit One (Champaign), the
Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC.), Northwestern University
(Evanston), University of Chicago and the Banff Center for the Arts
(Alberta, Canada).

Here's a dark, little piece from Argentinian
composer Luis Naón, "Around the Bell" as performed by Moscow Studio For
New Music Ensemble (that groups name that could not sound more Russian
in my head if it tried).

About the composer:

Luis Naón
is an Argentine composer, born in 1961 in La Plata. After completing
his music studies at the University of Buenos Aires, Luis Naón settled
in Paris in 1981. He attended advanced classes at the Conservatoire de
Paris with Guy Reibel, Laurent Cuniot (1982-1985), Daniel Teruggi,
Sergio Ortega and Horacio Vaggione and was awarded a doctorate at the
University of Paris 8.

A teacher of composition and new
technologies at the Conservatoire de Paris since 1991, he also teaches
in Barcelona and at the Geneva Universiy of Music. He is a member of the
ensemble Diagonal. Since Final del Juego (1983) and Tango del desamparo
(1987), he has sought to express dualities of culture
(Franco-Argentinian), of writing (spectral-combinatory), of genre
(acousmatic-instrumental) and of discipline (painting-music-theatre),
collaborating with Abel Robino (Alto Voltango, 2001), Yves Pagès (Les
parapazzi, 1998), François Wastiaux and the company Valsez-Cassis
(Hamlet, 1994).

Many of his works form part of Urbana, a cycle
of 24 pieces that include Speculorum memoria (1993), Requiem pour un
bookmaker chinois (1996), Sendero...que bifurcan (2003), Lascaux urbana
(2004), Orbetura urbana (2004) and Six caprices (2007). His works have
been played in prestigious concert halls and festivals in Europe,
America and Asia.

I just checked out the world premiere of Anna Clyne's "Primula Vulgaris" (2010) as performed by the New York outfit Metropolis Ensemble. This is a great piece.

About the piece:

Primula vulgaris: This European native is commonly
known as the English Primrose and is a welcome sight in the spring.

Flower clusters enchant the beholder with pale colors
of red, purple, yellow, white and blue, all with a yellow eye. The inspiration
for this piece was a reading of the first string quartet I wrote for
Metropolis. The original premise was to compose a string quartet derived from
material from Within Her Arms, a string ensemble piece that Metropolis will
perform in May 2010. The reading taught me two valuable lessons. Firstly, to
write each piece fresh and anew—leaning back on older pieces can create
lifeless music. I'm in a different space to where I was a year ago, when I was
writing Within Her Arms. Secondly, I realized what an influence actually
knowing the musicians I'm writing for has on my music. Having a sense of the
musicians both individually and as an ensemble can really influence a piece and
its direction. As a result of hearing my initial string quartet, I decided to
start anew with fresh material and writing with Kristin, Sean, Maurycy, and
Nicholas in mind.

Primula Vulgaris was commissioned and premiered by the
Metropolis Ensemble at the Americas Society in New York City.

About the composer:

London-born Anna Clyne is a composer of acoustic and
electro-acoustic music, combining resonant soundscapes with propelling textures
that weave, morph, and collide in dramatic explosions. Her work, described as “dazzlingly
inventive” by Time Out New York, often includes collaborations with cutting
edge choreographers, visual artists, film-makers, and musicians worldwide.

Currently the Chicago Symphony’s Mead
Composer-in-Residence through the 2013–14 season, the orchestra has performed
several of her works, including the premiere of Night Ferry in 2012 under the
baton of Riccardo Muti. An avid advocate for music education, Clyne teaches
composition workshops for local young composers and incarcerated youths as part
of this residency, and served as the Director of the New York Youth Symphony’s
award-winning program for young composers “Making Score” from 2008 to 2010.
Clyne was also recently a guest composer at the 2011 Mizzou New Music Summer
Festival.

Clyne’s <<rewind<<, “inspired by the image
of analog video tape rapidly scrolling backwards with fleeting moments of
skipping, freezing and warping,” has been recently performed with both the BBC
Symphony and BBC Concert Orchestra as well as at the Cabrillo Festival, the
National Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

She has received numerous accolades, including a
Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, eight
consecutive ASCAP Plus Awards, and a Clutterbuck award from the University of
Edinburgh. Additionally, she has received honors from Meet the Composer, the
American Music Center, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Jerome
Foundation. Clyne was a finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Composer Award, and
was nominated for a 2010 British Composer Award.

In 2012, Tzadik Records released a full album of Clyne’s
music, titled Blue Moth, showcasing a diverse range of her instrumental and
ensemble with tape pieces, including Roulette, fits + starts and Steelworks.

Her music is published exclusively by Boosey &
Hawkes.

“Anna Clyne is an artist who writes from the heart, who
defies categorization and who reaches across all barriers and boundaries. Her
compositions are meant to be played by great musicians and listened to by
enthusiastic audiences no matter what their background.” – Riccardo Muti.

Do you like electronics and things that go boom? Then check out Andrea Mazzariello's "Electrobot" for laptop/percussion quartet.

About the piece:

The idiosyncratic instruments I've built and approaches to playing them I've developed were conceived
for my own solo performance. This group of ambitious students at the So
Percussion Summer Institute gave me the surprising, unimagined
opportunity to expand into ensemble writing. They're reading a score
that doesn't look like it sounds, and playing 2-octave MIDI keyboards to
trigger samples that I created by recording myself playing old synths
and step-sequencing beats. The New York director/choreographer/filmmaker
Mark DeChiazza developed the projection idea, visually amplifying the
small movements on the keys that become large gestures in the sonic
space.

About the composer:

Andrea Mazzariello is a
composer, performer, writer, and teacher. His music thinks through the
capabilities of the performing body, in terms of both instrumental
technique and the possibilities afforded by technological intervention,
and pays special attention to the treatment and setting of his own
original text, spoken and sung.

He’s active as a solo
performer of his own work for a novel and evolving instrumental setup,
and has presented in such diverse venues as The Knitting Factory,
Cakeshop, the Queens New Music Festival, and the Wassaic Festival. His
concert music has been performed or read by the New Jersey Symphony, The
Berkshire Symphony, So Percussion, NOW Ensemble, and Newspeak, among
many others.

In 2011, he completed his Ph.D. in Music
Composition at Princeton University, writing on the vinyl resurgence and
its connection to our ideas of physicality and abstraction in music
analysis. He holds an M.M. from the University of Michigan and graduated
magna cum laude from Williams College, where he won a Hubbard
Hutchinson Memorial Fellowship for Excellence in Music and was named to
Phi Beta Kappa.

Andrea joined the faculty of the Princeton Writing Program in 2010, and currently teaches a seminar called "Music and Power."

From the composer about the performance:

The amazing, amazing participants at the So Percussion Summer Institute
premiered my new piece for laptop/percussion quartet last night. From
left to right: Jamey Kollar, Brendan Betyn, Elizabeth John, and Evan
Chapman. Full disclosure: this is the dress rehearsal, because I forgot
to press record at the actual performance.

This premiere was
exciting for a few reasons: the aforementioned four gave this piece real
attention and insight and committed fully to a potentially disorienting
learning process; the little sampler that Dan and I (mostly Dan) built
to play The Exchange (and that I'll also use to perform vs. the New
Machine at Wassaic) now has legs, has been used successfully by others
who don't reside in my brain; and the response to the whole thing during
the Institute was just so warm, from the So guys and from their really
incredible students. Magical.

I also wanted to announce that
I'll be performing at The Wassaic Festival, which happens over the
weekend of August 3-5. I go on at noon on Saturday, August 4. I'm
playing a set of songs on the solo instrument (keys, pads, laptop)
called vs. the New Machine. Come up if you can! Also note that I am
playing the exhibition space, not the music space. In other words, check
out "art," not "music." To find me at Wassaic, not as a general rule.
Unless you roll like that.

It's been a long time coming but we recently updated the FiveOne Experimental Orchestra website. It's great. We still have the FiveOne blog but in addition we now have more music, merchandise, full bios, as well as an updated concert schedule(which we will be announcing new dates soon).

Check it out. Buy a watch. Listen to some great music and give us some feedback.